Curative Education

Schmidt Number: S-5793

On-line since: 21st August 2004

FOURTH LECTURE

28th June, 1924

I
would like today to try as it were to round off our introductory
studies, so that we may be able, from tomorrow onwards, to pass on to
the practical consideration of particular cases; for it is indeed so,
that a faithful study of the nature of so-called illnesses of the
soul will of itself afford clues for the discovery of their right
treatment.

The
treatment of adult patients by our methods still presents
difficulties. As I explained yesterday, the treatment would require
certain conditions for the patients which, so long as things are in
the world as they are today, cannot be realised within the work of
our Society. For children, on the other hand, a very great deal can
be achieved  by education.

It
will already be clear to you, dear friends, that in illnesses of the
soul we have to do with karmic connections which come to
manifestation in the illness. This is, of course, true of other
illnesses too, but it is true in a much deeper sense, and more
specifically, of illnesses of the soul. We are therefore perfectly
justified in asking the question  we do not formulate it in so
many words, but it is bound to arise in the unconscious, and we must
a feeling for what lies behind it  the question, namely: how
far can we expect to bring about an improvement? Any degree of
improvement that we are able to bring about is so much gain for the
patient. We must never take refuge in the thought that, owing to the
patient's karma, things are bound to take their course in such and
such a way. We can say this about the external events; that a person
encounters on the path of destiny; but it is never possible to speak
so in regard to the free flow within him of his thoughts and feelings
and deeds. For here karma can take different roads; karma can even be
turned aside, so that the fulfilment comes in some quite other way.
Not that it ever fails to come, but karma can be fulfilled in many
ways. I have frequently said, when people have raised the question of
pre-natal education  meaning education in the embryonic
time  that so long as the child does not yet breathe, it is
the education and whole manner of life of the mother that is
of importance. For the rest, we should not intervene in the work of
God. In the embryonic period, it is entirely a matter of how things
are with the mother.

We
can now usefully carry further the study we began yesterday when we
were considering the epileptic disorder  the study, that is,
in regard to physical body, ether body, astral body and ego
organisation. What conclusion did we come to as regards all those
forms of illness in children, that are of an epileptic nature? We
found that in these illnesses we have to do with a congestion of
astral body and ego organisation in some organ. The surface of the
organ does not allow the astral body and ego organisation to make
their way out, and they become congested. They are, as it were,
jammed in the organ. An astral and ego atmosphere of high pressure
arises there. This causes fits. For what is really taking place, when
a fit occurs?

Suppose
you have an organ with its ether body within it. For each single
organ there is a definite relationship that should obtain between
physical body and ether body on the one hand and astral body and ego
on the other hand. Now I assume of course that all of you are
familiar with the fact that in inorganic external Nature, substances
combine with one another in certain definite relationships. The
descriptions of this that you find in the chemistry books are not
correct; nevertheless there are these well-defined relationships. I
purposely do not say relationships of weight, nor do I say atomic
relationships for there we would come into the realm of theory;
nevertheless it is a fact that hydrogen and oxygen, for example,
combine in a certain definite relationship. If we have sulphuric acid
(H2S04), we have in it hydrogen, sulphur and
oxygen in a particular relation to one another. If this relation were
to change, then the combination might under certain circumstances
give rise to an altogether different substance. We can, for example,
if we have a certain relation of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen that is
different from the relation in sulphuric acid, obtain sulphurous acid
(H2S03)  obtain, that is to say, a
different substance, although composed of the same three original
substances.

In
a similar way, physical body and ether body stand in a certain
definite relation to astral body and ego in the called normal human
being. (I say so-called, because the expression normal
human being is a purely conventional one, founded on the
belief that there is a fixed boundary dividing human beings into
normal and abnormal.) This relationship is, within limits, a variable
one. But if it exceeds a certain limit of variability  and
this again can be individual for the particular human being 
we have abnormality, a state of illness; in some organ astral body
and ego organisation will be present, but in such a way that they
cannot fill it in a right relationship. This will mean, that they are
unable to come forth from it, they cannot get out. You will remember,
we recognised yesterday the necessity for astral body and ego
organisation to come forth again out of an organ, out of the physical
body. When the astral body and ego are jammed and squeezed in this
way in some organ, then there is too much astral body, too much ego
in that organ; there is not the proper amount, there is a surplus 
with the result that the organ cannot help feeling the
astrality. If the organ has in it the right and proper amount, it
does not perceive or feel the astrality, it does not sense the
presence of astrality within it. But if there is in an organ an
activity of astral body and ego organisation that does not belong
there, then the organ is bound to feel it. If something is there in
the organ that does not pass over into consciousness, if there is
congestion, so that a great amount of astrality and ego organisation
is present which does not go over into consciousness, then a fit
takes place. The very description I have given you contains an
indication of the accompanying phenomenon  namely, disturbance
of consciousness. Disturbance of consciousness is bound to occur
whenever this congestion happens in an organ that is in any way
connected with consciousness.

When
such congestion of astral body and ego organisation takes place in an
organ that has not direct positive connection with consciousness 
for there are organs that are not directly but inversely connected
with consciousness, organs that in fact hinder or arrest
consciousness  then we have, not loss of consciousness, but
pain. Pain is heightened  not lessened 
consciousness. A fit as such is not painful, as you know; that is
simply a fact. Pain occurs when the congestion takes place, not in an
organ that promotes consciousness, but in an organ that retards or
arrests consciousness. Here the congestion will lead to enhanced
consciousness  to pain. That is the real nature of pain.

We
have now arrived at some understanding of all those forms of disorder
which, occurring in childhood, lead to epileptic and related
illnesses; we shall afterwards have to speak more specifically of
these illnesses, but that we can do better when we have individual
cases before us.

But
now you will easily see that we may also have a quite different state
of affairs. Instead of an organ whose surface holds back within the
organ the ego organisation and the astral body, we could have an
organ whose surface lets too much through, an organ that does not, as
it were, keep back sufficient for its own use. Here the astrality,
with which is associated also the ego organisation, is not dammed up,
but tends, on the contrary, to overflow the organ. The surface
becomes, as it were, porous for the astrality and the ego
organisation; they leak out of the organ. With
imaginative consciousness we do actually see rays streaming forth
from the organ. In an organ that leaks in this way you
will always find also the physical correlate of secretion; even where
the secretion is not strikingly present, you will find that it can
occur and can be detected. We shall have more to say about this
later. When a human being is affected with this condition in
childhood, the condition can be healed only if we are able to hold
fast the astral body and ego organisation  bring them back, as
it were, into the organ.

To
what forms of illness, to what outwardly perceptible complexes of
symptoms does such an inner condition lead? Here we come to a chapter
in our study, where the phenomena that show themselves differ
according as we are dealing with children or adults. For we come to
illnesses that are bound to assume quite special forms for the period
in human development between birth and puberty. We come, in effect,
to the various kinds of hysteria. Now it is just in the realm
where we are concerned with the forms of hysterical disorder, that
the deplorable lack of clarity in modern science proclaims itself.
Words are coined to name the various forms without any regard for
reality. This shows itself at once in the first picture people begin
to make of the matter; for in conformity with the modern way of
looking at such things they are, of course, bound to bring this
hysterical condition into connection somehow or other with the sexual
life, and more so in the case of the woman than of the man; and then
the forms of illness are named accordingly. The words by which the
various forms are designated are of no importance. What is important
for us is to make sure whether all the cases that are today reckoned
under these names really deserve to be called hysteria, in the way
the word is understood, or whether we do not rather need to have
recourse to a much wider classification.

Now,
as a matter of fact, the child who has not yet attained puberty
cannot possibly have the form of disorder from which he is frequently
said to suffer. He cannot have hysteria  if it is assumed that
hysteria is associated with sex. The child can, however, certainly
have in his earliest childhood what I have described as a protrusion
of astral body and ego organisation beyond an organ. That he can
have, but only that. We must turn a deaf ear to the various
descriptions that have been given for the better comprehension of
hysterical disorder. All these descriptions are made with reference
to one ruling idea; and when an idea is set up in this way and all
descriptions are made with reference to it, then these descriptions
cannot but be false. Countless descriptions in psychiatry today are
false just on this account. You cannot do things that way.

Let
us see what it is we really have before us in a young child who is
said to be suffering from hysteria. He has difficulty in making
contact with the external world. I explained yesterday what this
means. He has difficulty in taking hold rightly of the equilibrium
that belongs to the fluid element, of the equilibrium that is
associated with air, of the differentiations in warmth, in light, in
chemical action, and in the universal cosmic life. But instead of
grasping all these too weakly, as is the case with the epileptic, the
child takes hold too strongly, he puts his astral body and Ego
into his whole environment  into weight, into warmth; he
seizes hold of all the elements more intensely than is really
possible for a so-called normal person. And what is the result?

You
have only to remind yourself how it is with you when you have grazed
your skin at some spot. Suppose you then grasp hold of some object
with the sore surface, where the skin has been rubbed away. You know
how it hurts! The reason for your being so sensitive is that at that
spot (where the surface is raw) you come up against the external
world too vigorously with your inner astral body. Only in moderation
are we able to contact the external world with our astral body (and
ego organisation). The child who from the first brings his astral
body right out  such a child will touch and take hold of
things delicately, just as though he had been wounded. Nor shall we
be surprised to find in him this hyper-sensitiveness, this
hyper-sensitive response to the world around him. A human being in
this condition is bound to feel his environment much more keenly,
much more intensely; and he will moreover have within him a much more
powerful reflection of his environment.

And
now ideas will begin also to arise in the child which are
painful in themselves. It comes about in the following way. The
moment he begins to develop will in any direction, the child
has to reach out into something in regard to which he is
hyper-sensitive. And then as soon as the will begins to develop, a
strange condition arises in the conscious part of him. He becomes
super-conscious of the unfolding of the will; in other words, the
unfolding of the will causes him pain. Pain is present in nascent
state as soon as the will begins to appear, and the child tries to
hold back the pain. This happens with great intensity. He makes
restless, struggling movements, because he is trying to hold back the
pain. Here, you see, I have given you descriptions of inner
conditions which find their outlet in life in a clearly recognisable
manner. A child wants to do something but feels a pain and cannot do
it; instead of the soul-life flowing out into action, he has a
terribly powerful inward experience before which he shudders 
he shudders at himself. But now it may equally well be a question,
not of an outward action, but of a concealed or disguised action in
the sphere of thought  for the will lives also in the sphere
of thought. When it is a question of an action in the life of
thought, when it is ideas that should unfold, it may be that in
certain forms of illness these ideas, at the moment they should
develop, evoke fear, evoke anxiety and fear and are unable to arise
in the mind. Every such idea which, at the moment when it should come
to consciousness, evokes fear  every such idea simultaneously
causes the life of feeling to develop below it; feelings surge up,
and depression invariably sets in. Feelings which are not
comprehended, not taken hold of by ideas, give rise to depression;
only those feelings are not of a depressing nature, which, as soon as
they arise, are immediately apprehended by the life of thought and
ideation.

The
condition that has been described as arising out of the nature of the
case can be seen in the patient; it is there before us as a
complex of symptoms. If we have learned to know an abnormality for
what it really is, then we shall find that this true and essential
nature of the abnormality shows itself to us quite plainly in the
patient. And that is how it should be, when we take with us into the
practical spheres of life perceptions that have been arrived at in
Spiritual Science. When speaking to those who will have to intervene
in illnesses of this kind with practical help, descriptions must
leave the realm of the abstract entirely and enter right into the
realm of living reality, so that the person who listens to the
description can see it taking place in the patient before him. And in
such a case as we are considering, you do actually see what is
happening; in some organ, or nexus of organs, you perceive an
outflowing of the astrality or ego organisation.

A
phenomenon in a child, which brings the complex of symptoms to
expression with somewhat rude plainness, is nocturnal enuresis.
It happens quite naturally; but only in the light of what has been
explained will you see the phenomenon of bed-wetting in a child in
its right perspective. For it has its origin in the condition we have
been describing. Whenever you have a case of bed-wetting, you can
assume that the astral body is running out, is overflowing. As a
matter of fact, secretions and excretions of every kind are always
connected with the activity of the astral body and ego organisation.
These must therefore be in order, if we want the secretions and
excretions to be in order.

Now
it is through the physical body that the ego organisation and astral
body are connected with the four elements (as they are called),
whilst in the etheric body, the ego organisation and astral body are
connected more with the higher elements, with a part of the warmth,
with the light, with the chemical ether and with the universal
life-ether. If now we may borrow from the physical realm a word which
can be most expressive when we extend its application to the
spiritual (as was continually done in earlier times, when men had
instinctive clairvoyance and made no such sharp distinction as we do
between physical and spiritual), let us take the word soreness
and speak of a child having soreness of soul. The child is
sore in his soul, and this soreness of soul becomes a dominant idea
in him, overriding everything else. If it cannot be made better by
means of curative education, then, when the child attains puberty,
either the feminine or the masculine form of this soreness will
appear. The feminine form will have the character of hysteria, as it
was called when there was still a true perception of it. The
masculine form will have a different character. We shall be able to
speak about that also; we shall find that it assumes quite other
forms.

Whenever
therefore you have a case where the conditions are the opposite of
what are found in epileptic or epileptoid trouble, you will always
have to give your attention to the excretions. And you will find you
need to observe particularly how the child sweats. Whenever you want
to bring something home to the child, to call up ideas in him, then
watch carefully to see whether the inner soreness of soul, that is
experienced at the origination of an idea, does not express itself in
conditions of sweating. There is a certain difficulty here. In the
ordinary way, one might imagine that when something like sweating had
been stimulated by an inner condition of soul, the sweating would be
noticeable immediately afterwards. It may be so in some circumstances
but it is not necessarily so. For, the peculiar thing is that the
inner anxiety or shrinking, the feeling of tenderness and soreness,
does not work as does an outer feeling of soreness; but what arises
as the result of it is first of all digested in the
human being, and will sometimes take then the strangest paths in the
interior of the human being, making its appearance not at all quickly
but, curiously enough, only after some time, in the course of the
next three to three and a half days.

Now,
everything that is caused by expansion of astral body and ego
organisation, is connected with what meets us in the normal
expansion of astral body and ego organisation at death. When
it is a question of congestion, the opposite condition from dying
sets in. In epileptic phenomena there is the attempt to damn up life
within the organism, to imitate, under abnormal circumstances, the
process of creeping into the physical organism when the descent to
earth takes place. But in the condition of which we are speaking now,
we have to do with an imitation of what happens at death. After death
the astral body and ego expand at the same time as life flows away;
and it is with an imitation of this condition that we are here
concerned. When once we are able to feel this, we come to acquire,
little by little, something that is important in the observation of
such cases. We acquire, namely, an organ of smell for what is present
in the child; we smell this outflow. For it can really be smelled,
and it belongs to the esoteric side of our work to acquire this
perception and to experience how the aura of these children smells
differently from the aura of normal children. There is actually
something faintly corpse-like in the auric sweatings of these
children. Such a fact can help to bring it home to you that we do
indeed have here a kind of imitation of death; the accompanying
phenomena of dying appear, in the sweatings that occur
in consequence of this or that symptom. Such phenomena can make their
appearance in the course of the next three days, approximating to the
period during which the backward review after death takes place, when
the astral body and ego organisation are expanding.

Working
with this knowledge, you will have to accustom yourselves to imprint
in your memory something you have noticed in the connections of mind
or will of such a child, and then go on observing him for the next
three or four days. This will enable you to discover whether you have
before you the form of abnormal soul-life of which I have been
speaking. And now we are at last rightly equipped for tackling the
question: How am I to treat such a child?

The
soul of the child lies open to my view in his every action. His soul
flows into everything I see him doing around me. In such a case,
where the soul of the child comes streaming towards you, you will
realise that the education must more than ever depend upon what the
teacher, on his part, is able to bring to the child in his own
attitude of soul  in his whole mood, when he is dealing with
something in his own surroundings, when he is himself doing
something. Suppose you are a very nervy teacher, a person who is
continually doing things in such a way as to give a shock to other
people. This quality of character or temperament is much more
widespread than one imagines; it is exceedingly frequent among
teachers. If I may use a frivolous expression  are not most
teachers today inclined to be jumpy? This state of
nerves, where people are so easily put out or upset, simply cannot be
avoided, so long as the training of teachers continues to be as it is
today, where the student is overloaded with an enormous amount of
undigested knowledge. Those who take teachers' training courses (we
are concerned here with the training of teachers, so I say nothing
about other courses of training!) ought never on any account to have
to go in for an examination. The examination in front of them puts
them into the frame of mind which leads to this nervy condition.

You
will see at once in what a difficult position we are placed when we
have to develop our work on the background of present-day conditions!
We are at this moment faced with the question of organising the
Lauenstein Home for backward children. In view of the government
regulations, those who are to take charge would be well advised to
take the examination. One of them, at any rate, will have to do so.
And yet there is no sense in it; because it is, of course, only
another opportunity of becoming nervy. This is a situation which we
must face quite dispassionately  unless we want to go through
the world blindfold! There is nothing to be done but to take the
examination, and after it gradually get rid of the nervous
tendencies. That is, however, what most people do not succeed in
doing.

Anything
in the environment that may cause even a slight shock to the child 
if it originates in the unconscious, in the temperament, of the
teacher  must be avoided. And do you know why? Because the
teacher must also be capable of inducing shock, consciously and
deliberately; shocks are often the very best remedy for these
conditions! They take effect, however, only if they do not proceed
from unconscious habit, but are given consciously and deliberately,
the teacher watching intently all the time to observe the effect on
the child.

Suppose
you have observed this complex of symptoms in a child. You must take
the child and get him to write, or read, or paint. Well, and what
then? Having first tried to bring him to do as much as he with his
particular constitution is capable of doing, then, at a certain
point, try to bring the work into a quicker tempo. This will
mean that the child is then obliged to let, not the feeling of
soreness, but the anxiety connected with the soreness, retire,
because you are there in front of him and he cannot help getting into
a fresh state of anxiety on that account. The fact that the
child is at this moment compelled to come into a new state of
anxiety, compelled to enter into an experience that has been
artificially promoted and is different from the previous one, brings
it about that he strengthens within him, consolidates within him, the
ego and astral that are trying to flow out. If you repeat such things
systematically with a child, over and over again, a consolidation of
ego and astral body will take place. But you must not grow tired! You
must do the thing over and over again, preparing your whole teaching
in such a way that, as it proceeds, at certain moments it suddenly
takes a new turn.

For
this, it is, of course, essential that you have the arranging of the
teaching in your own hands. If, let us say, every three-quarters of
an hour you are obliged to take a different subject, then all your
plans will be frustrated. A form of teaching for abnormal children
can be built up on the basis of what we have introduced in the
Waldorf School  period lessons where, during the main teaching
hours, one subject is continued for weeks at a time. For we have, as
you know, no set curriculum for the early morning hours between 8 and
l0 a.m.; the teacher can take what he chooses, what he sees to be
right, in accordance with the principles on which he works. On this
basis you can also work out what you must do for abnormal children.
You will be able, for instance, to introduce such a method as I was
describing, where you are continually changing the teaching, altering
the tempo. By such means you will find you can work very strongly
indeed upon glandular secretion, and therewith on the consolidation
of the astral body in the child. But you will have to practise a
certain resignation, for where this kind of treatment has been given
and healing has begun, people will not notice that the children have
begun to grow healthy. They will notice only that in a particular
case there has been in their view no healing, since becoming
normal is regarded by them as the right and natural thing to
expect. What the world calls becoming normal is however
not at all a thing to be so taken for granted.

So
you see, whereas in cases of epileptic or epileptoid trouble it was a
question (as I explained yesterday) of adopting rather methods that
call for bodily activity, or else methods that work purely in the
moral sphere, it is mainly didactic methods that will be needed for
combating this other trouble of which I have been speaking today. To
give these shocks  that is one thing you must
do. And the other is as follows.

Observe
carefully how the condition alternates between depression on the one
hand, and on the other hand a kind of excitement or mania, outbursts
of mirth and cheerfulness. What is the cause, when they occur in
these forms of illness, of such alternation between states of
depression and mania? Owing to the inward soreness, there is a
perpetual longing not to let the will come to expression. If the will
fails to unfold in the life of ideas, then conditions of depression
arise. But when this has been happening for a long time and the child
can no longer restrain himself but must give vent, there arises 
because the inner soreness is repressed and the child can now flow
right out, together with the astral outflow  an enhanced
feeling of well-being. So we have in this way alternating conditions
of sadness and hilarity, which, when they occur in a child who has
also the other symptoms of sweating and bed-wetting, should be
carefully watched. For this is where we must intervene as teachers.

Suppose
we are faced with depression in the child. The first step will have
been taken, the moment the child feels that we are strongly united
with him inwardly, that we understand him. But because we are dealing
here with a kind of hypertrophy of the life of thought and will, what
the child needs is more than that we simply share his sorrow. If we
are merely dejected and sorrowful with the child  that is no
good to him! We can help him only if we are ourselves competent to
cope with the depression we are experiencing with him, and able
therefore to give him effective consolation, so that he feels comfort
and relief.

A
teacher who can understand these things will learn to find for
himself the methods he can use. He will know, for example, that a
constant idea in such children is that they think they ought to do
something, and yet they cannot do it. It is a complicated idea, but
one must be able to study it and understand it. They ought to do
something and cannot do it; but they have to do it
notwithstanding, and then it turns out differently from how they
would have liked. Examine the soul-life of such children and try to
get hold of the idea in their soul. One could express it in the
following words: I want to do it. I cannot do it. And
yet I must do it ... And then it turns out differently from what it
ought to be.

In
this complex of ideas the whole of the child's illness is really
contained. The child detects in himself the peculiar constitution
which consists in the out-flowing of astral body and ego
organisation. It manifests as a kind of working
outwards-into-the-world of the astral body  I will do
it. But the child knows that then he comes immediately up
against the external world and its reagents. Here is the soreness,
here it hurts. The child is forced to perceive: I cannot do
it! Then he knows that it has to be done, nevertheless. He
feels: I have to reach out with my astral body into the agents
of the world. But I have no control over what I take in hand, I am so
unskilful with my out-flowing astral body. The thing turns out
different, because I am not in full control; the astral body flows
out too strongly.

It
is precisely in such children that we can observe, in the most
wonderful way, what the sub-consciousness, which reaches up into the
life of feeling, is really doing. The sub-conscious is so terribly
clever! It stamps into the clearest concepts what is going on in the
inner constitution of the child, and in his relationship with others
as well as with his environment. All this is, so to speak,
disentangled in the child's sub-consciousness. But it does not rise
up into consciousness. We have to go in search of it. We have to put
forth all our efforts to discover these inner, unconscious complexes
of ideas in the child. And now suppose the moment comes when such a
complex shows itself to you. You notice it. As a matter of fact, it
is there almost every time the child is about to begin something in
the way of outer action or even also in the way of thought; it is
nearly always there. If you intervene at this moment by gently
helping in what the child has to do  doing it with him,
feeling, as it were, every movement of his hand in your
hand, then the child will have the feeling that the second stage
is being corrected for him by what you are doing. Naturally the child
is not helped at all if you simply do for him the things he
has to do. You must intervene only fictitiously. Say, you get the
child to paint. You do not paint yourself; but you sit down by him
and move your paint brush, accompanying with your brush each movement
he makes with his. The child will have the idea that you are gently
guiding him, while thus, with love in your heart, you do with him
what he has to do; the fact that you are there beside him in this way
 he will feel it like a gentle caress in his soul. Even down
to intimate details of this nature, we shall be able to find, if we
practise a really careful observation, the right thing to do.

In
everything Spiritual Science can give, you will always find that
there is at last this summons to the individual human being; he must
do his part. People are for ever wanting prescriptions: Do this in
this way, do that in that way! But the fact is, anyone who sets out
to educate abnormal children will never have finished learning. Each
single child will be for him a new problem, a new riddle. And the
only way he can succeed in finding what he must do in the individual
case, is to let himself be guided by the being in the child. It is
not easy, but it is the only real way to work. And this is the reason
why it is of such paramount importance that, as teachers, we should
take in hand our own self-education.

The
best kind of self-education will be found to consist in following
the symptoms of illness with interest, so that ever and anon we
have the feeling: there is something quite wonderful about that
symptom! Not that we should go about the world, proclaiming with a
flourish of trumpets that it is the insane who are the really divine
human beings. One must not do that  not in our time! We should
however be fully awake to the fact that when an abnormal symptom
makes its appearance, something is there which, seen spiritually,
stands nearer to the Spiritual than the things that are done by man
in his healthy organism. Only, this standing-nearer-to-the-Spiritual
cannot become active in the healthy organism in the corresponding
way. If we have once grasped this, then many intimate truths will
reveal themselves to us.

It
is, as you see, indeed the case that in every domain diagnosis and
pathology lead  of themselves  to a real therapy,
provided the diagnosis can succeed in penetrating to the essence of
the trouble.